Haworth发现必须重新考虑开放式办公室，以防止员工失去重点
Open-plan offices must be rethought to prevent employees losing focus, finds Haworth

由专筑网缕夕，韩平编译

根据家具品牌Haworth的研究，开放式办公室是“破坏”员工专注工作的能力，而连接则让他们“信息过剩瘫痪”。

在与Haworth合作制作的新系列文章的第二篇中，我们来看看为什么员工在工作场所失去焦点，以及如何避免。

Haworth的白皮书“设计焦点工作”指出，平均而言，办公室工作人员因工作中断和干扰而失去28％的生产时间。这个问题导致员工提前或延长工作，以完成需要集中注意力的工作。

白皮书指出：“这个挑战不是新的。” 几十年来，办公室工作人员一直希望能集中精力。

Haworth的研究表明，工作集中力是职场中最有效地支持活动。在本文引用的全球调查中，超过半数的受访者表示，他们的雇主没有做好帮助他们管理超负荷的工作。

“不堪重负的员工”被超连接的信息轰炸，让他们花更少的时间思考工作和解决问题。

在过去十年中，共享开放式办公空间的普及率大幅度增加，逐渐取代隔间作为标准办公布局。 虽然开放式环境被认为增加了员工之间的合作关系，降低了成本，但Haworth的文章警告说，开放式空间对个人员工绩效的成本可能体现出一些劣势。

“成功的合作需要团队努力和专注的个人工作，”文中说。“这些工作模式之间的转换确实使协作具有意义和生产力。”


任务越高，效率越低。

除了员工在开放式工作环境中不得不面对的视觉混乱和噪音污染外，以电子邮件通知、嗡嗡作响的智能手机和弹出式警报等形式分散注意力的干扰也在打断人们的注意力。

当员工尝试同时执行两个或多个任务时，尽管看起来他们可能会同时完成许多事情，但实际情况是，随着任务切换，完成所有任务所需的时间越长，他们所犯的错误越多，他们变得越来越分心。

这篇文章引用了Mark, Gonzalez和 Harris对工人进行的2005项研究，发现平均有25分钟工人们一旦中断就回到原来的工作岗位，工人们在重新开始原来的任务之前，至少要做两项工作。

哈佛研究专家Beck Johnson对白皮书做出了贡献，他说：“我们的大脑工作方式与数千年来一样，但是现在我们拥有了所有这些额外的技术和生物学技术，使我们跟不上它了。

“多任务技术是一项特别具有挑战性的任务，因为随着我们得到的所有警报，我们处于一种状态，我们正在调整自己以摆脱任务，而绝大多数人并没有很好地完成多任务。”


进入流程

流动——匈牙利心理学家Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi在20世纪70年代发明的心理概念——描述了当我们完全沉浸在活动中时发生的精神状态。Haworth的白皮书表明，在办公环境中发生的工作需要情境认知和流动。

Johnson解释说：“当我们开始控制注意力时，我们的大脑是一个非常重要的事情——它有能力学习判断手头的任务什么是重要的，什么是不重要的，它将开始自动抑制不重要的事情。“

“分析会存在，但我们的工作环境必须支持重点工作，而不是创造更多的障碍来实现流程。”

作为由Haworth在哥伦比亚能源巨头EPM波哥大总部进行的研究项目的一部分，有336名EPM员工被要求评估在试点领域新的工作空间概念的影响，并将其与以前的办公室进行比较。在整个项目中与EPM合作，Haworth有助于确定实施新工作方式时遵循的最佳策略。

Haworth研究专家Maria Eugenia Latournerie解释说：“EPM的问题是，他们如何能将20岁的办公室和家具更新为充满活力的空间。“我们了解到，EPM不仅需要工作场所战略，而且需要更深入地了解和理解员工的需求、痛苦和收益，从而让转型可能是整体的。”

试点项目将三分之二的员工人数从高分隔的小区移到了面板高度低的房间。还增加了各种合作会议空间和小组社交空间，以及各种新技术。

在办公室搬迁前后进行的调查显示，总体而言，员工们对新的、共享的空间感到轻松了百分之一，而沮丧的人少了百分之三。总的来说，在进入新空间后员工的表现没有显著变化。

然而，在新的工作空间支持焦点工作方面，收视率有了大幅下降——减少了22%。结果发现，空间和家具占高达25每到工作区中的集中能力分可调性的易读性。


在开放式办公室可以实现重点关注

Haworth的研究表明，为了使员工重点专注，工作场所需要为合作和重点工作提供明确的空间——这是一个小而有效的调整。

为了补充会议空间和协作空间，Haworth建议，像EPM这样的公司需要考虑增加小型，便利的位置和未分配的“重点”空间，供员工在需要时短时间使用。

在EPM的波哥大总部，项目负责人DiegoLeónSalazar Vargas发现了几个改进的机会，例如通过安装地毯降低噪音水平，并清楚地标记交通路线，以便访客到达地板不会通过在书桌之间移动来产生视觉分心。

除了提供正确的环境外，Haworth还建议，EPM应该在使用新空间时为员工提供更有效的工作场所和行为方面的培训。

Salazar Vargas告诉Dezeen，“潜在的任务是灌输人们行为的变化。”这是一个结合我们使用空间的方式的变化的问题。

他继续说：“最重要的是让人们参与变革的过程，因为当与员工合作开发思想时，更容易，而不是强加于员工，我们通过与要去的人员进行研讨会填写试点楼层。“

“通过明确的变革，交流和学习的战略，我们正在加强新的行为，不能消失，因为人们容易回到旧的行为：坚持和坚持。

总之，Haworth的白皮书提出了一种整体的办公室设计方法，可以分为五大原则：多样化，选择，控制，易读和充电。

Haworth研究专家Beck Johnson说：“当视觉干扰存在时，人们的表现有巨大的下降。“你需要为人们提供各种各样的空间，他们可以选择如何通过工作空间的功能和家具来控制视觉和听觉的干扰，需要有合作和重点工作的空间。”

“可读性也很重要——人们需要能够走进一个空间，轻松创建一个精神地图，并确定其目的是什么，”约翰逊继续说。“当您创建清晰的空间时，您可以节省人们的认知处理能力，并保留能量供人们参与工作，而不是弄清楚如何浏览空间。”

“最后，包括”充电“空间，”约翰逊建议。“什么时候，我们正在集中精力工作，我们耗费资源，我们累了，我们的大脑变得疲惫，当我们不专注于某些事情时，我们的大脑真的很棒，所以充电非常重要。

这是Dezeen与Haworth合作编写的一系列文章的一部分，根据公司的白皮书研究文件。这些文件旨在帮助客户在巨大变化的时候开发量身定制的办公解决方案。

插图：Vesa S.

Open-plan offices are "sabotaging" employees' ability to focus at work, while connectivity is leaving them "paralysed" by an oversupply of information, according to research by furniture brand Haworth.
In the second in a new series of articles produced in collaboration with Haworth, we look at why employees lose focus in the workplace, and how it can be avoided.
Haworth's white paper, Designing for Focus Work, states that on average, office workers lose 28 per cent of their productive time due to interruptions and distractions at work. The problem has resulted in employees starting their working days earlier or working late in order to complete tasks that require focus and concentration.
"This challenge isn't new," the white paper states. "Office workers have desired places to focus for decades."
Haworth's research suggests that focus work is the least effectively supported activity in the workplace. In a global survey referenced in the paper, more than half of respondents claimed their employers were not doing a good job of helping them manage overload.
The "overwhelmed employee" is being bombarded by information from hyper-connectivity, leaving them with less time to spend thinking about work and solving problems.
The prevalence of shared, open-plan office spaces has increased significantly in the past decade, gradually replacing cubicles as the standard office layout. While open-plan environments are believed to increase collaboration between staff members and lower real-estate costs, Haworth's paper warns that the costs of open-plan spaces to individual employee performance can outweigh some of the benefits.
"Successful collaboration requires both group efforts and individual focused work," reads the paper. "Switching between these modes of work is really what makes collaboration meaningful and productive."

Higher multitasking equals lower effectiveness
In addition to the visual clutter and noise pollution that employees have to contend with in open-plan work environments, a bombardment of distractions in the form of email notifications, buzzing smartphones, and pop-up alerts are interrupting focus.
When workers attempt to perform two or more tasks simultaneously, even though it may seem like they are accomplishing many things at once, the reality is that, as they task-switch, the longer it takes them to complete all of the tasks, the more mistakes they make, and the more distracted they become.
The paper cites a 2005 study of workers by Mark, Gonzalez, and Harris, which found that it took, on average, 25 minutes for workers to get back to their original task once interrupted, and workers focused on at least two other tasks before resuming the original task.
"Our brains have worked the same way they have for millennia, but now we have all this extra technology and our biology can't keep up with it," says Haworth research specialist Beck Johnson, who contributed to the white paper.
"Multitasking is where technology can be particularly challenging, because with all of the alerts we get, we're in a state where we're conditioning ourselves to be pulled off task and the vast majority of people do not multitask well."

Getting into the flow
Flow – a psychological concept invented by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1970s – is a term that describes a mental state that occurs when we are fully immersed in an activity. Haworth's white paper suggests that work that occurs in an office environment requires both situational awareness and flow.
Johnson explains: "When we start to control attention, our brain is a phenomenal thing – it has the ability to learn what is important for the task at hand and what is unimportant, and it will start to automatically suppress the things that are unimportant."
"Distractions will exist," says the paper, "but our work environments must support focus work instead of creating more barriers to achieving flow."

As part of a research project carried out by Haworth at the Bogota headquarters of Colombian energy giant EPM, 336 EPM employees were asked to assess the impact of new workspace concepts within a pilot space, and compare it to their former office. Working with EPM throughout the project, Haworth helped to define the best strategy to follow when implementing new ways of working.
"The question EPM had was, how could they update their 20 year-old offices and furniture into a vibrant space," explained Haworth research specialist Maria Eugenia Latournerie. "We understood that EPM needed more than just workplace strategy, they needed to go deeper, understand and empathise with employee needs, pains, and gains so the transformation could be holistic."
The pilot project moved two thirds of the employee population from cubicles with high partitions, into cubicles with low panel heights. A variety of collaborative meeting spaces and group social spaces were also added, along with various new technologies for those spaces.
Surveyed before and after the office move, overall the employees reported feeling three per cent more relaxed in the new, shared space and one per cent less frustrated. All in all, there was no significant change in employee performance after the move to the pilot space.
However, there was a steep drop in ratings for how well the new workspace supported focus work – a reduction of 22 per cent. It was found that legibility of space and adjustability of furnishings accounts for as much as 25 per cent of the ability to focus in the workspace.

Focus can be achieved in the open-plan office
Haworth's research indicates that, in order for employees to achieve focus, the workplace needs to provide clearly defined spaces for both collaboration and focus work – a small but effective adjustment.
To complement meeting spaces and collaboration spaces, Haworth advises that companies like EPM need to consider adding small, conveniently located and unassigned "focus" spaces, for employees to use for short periods when the need arises.
At EPM's Bogota headquarters, project leader Diego León Salazar Vargas identified several opportunities for improvement, such as reducing noise levels by installing carpet, and clearly marking traffic routes so that visitors to the floor would not create visual distraction by moving between desks.
In addition to providing the right kind of environment, Haworth suggested that EPM should provide training for employees on more effective workstyles and behaviours when using the new space.

"The underlying theme is instilling a change in people's behaviours," Salazar Vargas told Dezeen. "It is a matter of incorporating a change in the way we make use of the spaces."
He continued: "The most important thing is to get people involved in the process of change, because it is easier when ideas are developed in collaboration with employees rather than imposed upon on them. We did this through workshop sessions with people who were going to populate the pilot floor."
"We are reinforcing new behaviors through an articulated strategy of change, communication and learning, that cannot disappear, because people easily return to old behaviors: insist and persist."
In conclusion, Haworth's white paper proposes a holistic approach to office design, which can be broken down into five principles: variety, choice, control, legibility and recharging.
"There's a huge drop in how well people perform when visual distractions are present," said Haworth research specialist Beck Johnson. "You need to provide people with a variety of spaces where they can choose how to control visual and auditory distractions through workspace features and furnishings. There needs to be room for both collaboration and focus work."
"Legibility is important too – people need to be able to walk into a space and easily create a mental map of it and identify what the purpose of it is," Johnson continued. "When you create clear spaces you are saving on people's cognitive processing, and preserving that energy for people to channel into their work instead of figuring out how to navigate the space."
"Lastly, include 'recharge' spaces," advised Johnson. "When, we're doing concentrated focus work we deplete resources; we get tired, our brains get tired. Our brains do really great stuff when we're not being deliberate about concentrating on something. So recharging is really so very important."
This is part of a series of articles produced by Dezeen in collaboration with Haworth, based on the company's white paper research documents. These documents are intended to help clients develop tailor-made office solutions in times of dramatic change.
Illustration is by Vesa S.


出处：本文译自www.dezeen.com/，转载请注明出处。